GPIB Installation/Configuration Troubleshooter
Acquiring an IP Address
How do I acquire an IP address for my GPIB-ENET?
Ideally, you should ask your network administrator to provide you with an IP address for your GPIB-ENET. The alternative is to assign one yourself, which could cause conflicts if you use an IP address that is already claimed by another resource on the network.
If you decide to assign your own IP address, then you can test or "ping" different IP addresses on your subnet until you find an available IP address. To do this, follow these steps:
- Determine your computer's IP address. Go to Start » Run, type command, and hit the OK button. This will open a Command Prompt window.
- At the prompt type ipconfig and hit Enter. This will tell you your computer's IP address, as shown in the image below:
Figure 1. IP Configuration window showing IP address of 130.164.58.119.
- The IP address consists of four 8-bit integers (i.e., possible values of 0 to 255 for each of the four numbers) separated by periods. The subnet is the first three sets of numbers of the IP address. In the picture shown above, the subnet is "130.164.58".
- To find an available IP address on your subnet, you may ping IP addresses that have the same subnet as your computer, but with a different final number. Go to Start » Run and type ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (where the xxx's represent a possible IP address on the same subnet as your computer).
For example, if our computer has an IP address of 130.164.58.119, then we might try ping 130.164.58.118, which is an IP address on the same subnet as our computer.
This will launch a Command Prompt window, as shown below:
Figure 2. A ping attempt that has timed out.
If you get a reply from your ping attempt, then that address is being used. If your ping times out, then you have found an available IP address. Try assigning this IP address to your GPIB-ENET.
